The new Sisters in Crime WA Chapter launched at the Geraldton Big Sky Readers and Writers Festival on 25 October. This event, organised by Geraldton Library’s Trudi Cornish and a dedicated staff, featured authors such as Dave Warner, Jon Doust, Michael Trent, and Gillian O’Shaughnessy amongst many other talented authors.
The Sisters event at Batavia Brewing, our generous host, was full of enthusiastic readers for both our panels. The first panel featured Sisters in Crime, Lisa Ellery (Hot Ground), Karen Herbert (The Ghost Walk), Dawn Farnham (Tokyo Time), and Geraldton Convenor and budding fiction author Shirley ‘Sam’ McKinnon. They discussed fictional topics like getting started, finding the inspiration, writing style, perils of the pitch, getting published, and the knotty subject of AI.
This was followed by a brilliant interview with local police woman Luci Cleghorn by Sam. She spoke feelingly and lucidly about her life juggling home, family, and career as a woman in the Geraldton police force and about the ever-harder job of dealing with drugs, juvenile crime, and domestic violence. She had the audience gripped.
Our thanks go out to the festival organisers and the Geraldton Regional Library for their warm and enthusiastic welcome to Sisters in Crime Western Australia, to Batavia Brewing who hosted the event, and to all the readers and writers at the Big Sky Festival.
The next event will be in December in Fremantle. More on this to follow.
The Western Australia Chapter convenors are Dawn Farnham, Sarah Evans, Sam McKinnon, and Lisa Ellery. Contact them via sistersincrimewa@gmail.com